This morning you’ll notice we mixed up the order of the readings a little bit. That’s because I really want to pay attention to is the Jonah reading. The lectionary only gives us the end of it but to really get the whole scope of it, I’m going to go ahead and sort of paraphrase the whole story for you.
Our story begins: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” So Jonah went…to Joppa to find a ship going to Tarshish. Now, to put this in perspective, this is would be like God saying, I want you to go to Chicago, and responding, OK, sounds good, only about four hours to the Mackinaw bridge from here, and from there it’s just a short hop across the UP into Canada and on to Nova Scotia. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in what is modern-day Syria, east of Israel. Tarshish, however, was a seaport on the western coast of Spain, so basically as far west as one could go without falling off the edge of the known world. Now in fairness to Jonah, the Assyrians were not known for their niceness. They had a well-earned reputation for violence and conquest, and they were really the worst enemies of the Israelites. So Jonah had good reason to fear going there. But the edge of the known world seems maybe a little bit extreme.
When Jonah got to Joppa, he bought a ticket, boarded a boat, and promptly fell asleep. Running away from the presence of God is pretty exhausting work. But the ship was not too far out into the Mediterranean when a massive storm blew in, threatening to destroy the boat. The captain woke up Jonah and pleaded with him to call on God to spare them, but still the storm raged. So finally, Jonah is like, you know what, you’re going to have to just throw me into the sea, I guess. And the sailors are like, we don’t want to do that, if you’re a prophet, your God’s going to be pretty mad at us for drowning you. But Jonah’s like, nope, the only way God will spare you, is if you throw me into the sea. So, what could they do, they threw him into the sea.
But before he drown, a giant fish came and swallowed him whole. Now Jonah’s certainly having a pretty bad day here, but you know who’s having a worse day is the fish. I mean, Jonah chose to run away from God, and Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard. But the poor fish, he’s just swimming by, minding his own business, doing whatever fish do, and suddenly he’s called upon to swallow this, rather disagreeable, human, and keep him in his stomach. Can’t digest the guy, can’t even chew him up a little bit, just this huge lump of grumpy human sitting in his belly whining about how God, who, mind you, just saved him from drowning, is picking on him. Talk about some serious indigestion!
So finally, after three days of this, God spoke to the fish, and the fish, and this is directly from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, “spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.” Spewed isn’t even really the best translation of the Hebrew here, really the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore. Seriously, if anyone tells you the Bible is boring, have them read Jonah. Especially if that person happens to be a preteen boy.
So now Jonah’s out of the water and back on the land. And for a second time, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” And this time, Jonah goes to Nineveh, an “exceedingly large city,” literally in the Hebrew, “a great city to God.” It’s such a huge place that it took three days to walk across it, the same amount of time, remember, that Jonah was in the belly of the fish. But Jonah didn’t make it the full trip across Nineveh, he got about a day’s walk in. He was supposed to be proclaiming a message of judgment, shouting “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be over thrown.” But I wonder how enthusiastically he shouted this message. Was he really shouting? Or was he walking along, sort of unobtrusively, “nothing to see here, nothing to see, forty days, God’s going to overthrow the city, but just, you know, go about your business, don’t let me bother you…”
But even just a day’s walk into the city, the response of the Ninevites was sudden and intense. As soon as they heard the message, they instantly believed God, proclaimed a fast, and begged God for mercy. This brings us to our reading for this morning. Jonah chapter three, verse ten through chapter 4, verse eleven.
“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. —I love this here, I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and somehow Jonah makes that sound like a bad thing. —And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” — Really Jonah, better for you to die then to live, because you succeeded in your mission and an entire city of people was not completely destroyed? — And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. — Basically, Jonah goes out of the city to pout for a while, and while he’s out there pouting—The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” A Word for God’s people. Thanks be to God.
So here’s what I love about the Jonah story. First off, was there ever such an annoying, thick-headed, little twerp as Jonah? I mean, seriously, ran away to Joppa, whined for three days in the belly of a fish, really apathetically proclaimed God’s message, and then got angry when God saved an entire city full of people. And then got even more angry when the bush he was sitting under died and he had to sit in the sun for the afternoon. Except he didn’t have to sit in the sun. He could have gone into the city, gone home to Israel, really done anything other than sit pouting under a tree, hoping that God might still reign down fire, even though God is, annoyingly apparently, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
But here’s the thing, as annoying and wrong-headed as Jonah was, as many times as Jonah got it wrong, went in the wrong direction, got worked up about something silly, God was determined that Jonah would finish, and not just finish but succeed beyond his wildest dreams, at the task which God had called him to.
And that is great news for us for a lot of reasons. I think, or I hope at least, that Jonah looked back on this event and thought, wow, was I ever a bad prophet. And that’s certainly a feeling I can relate to. Jonah’s a pretty extreme example, but even when I’m actually trying to spread this message of God’s forgiveness, it’s hard to be a prophet and even my best attempts fall flat. But if Jonah, whiney, apathetic Jonah, managed to save an entire city, maybe God can, and in fact is, using my weak attempts at spreading the Gospel.
But I think the best news in this story is maybe also the most challenging. And it’s this, that only God gets to decide who is and who is not forgiven. And God is, whether we like it or not, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Jonah was all prepared to send the Ninevites off to damnation, he saw nothing worth saving in these people who he saw as sinners. But God wanted to rescue the Ninevites, and nothing Jonah could do or say was going to change God’s mind. The Ninevites, more than one hundred and twenty people and also many animals, mattered to God.
It’s great news for the days when we feel like the Ninevites. When it maybe feels like we’re too far gone, too broken, too outside the realm of God to be forgiven. Or if someone has told us, you don’t matter, you’re too far gone to be saved. The Jonah story tells us that it doesn’t matter what the people of God may have decided about you, God loves you. That God is always, always, always, a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That God is always concerned about God’s people, no matter how far they have strayed.
This is good news, but there is also a challenge for us here. Because Jonah’s judgmentalness, while I’ve sort of made fun of it here, is a real temptation. So here’s the challenge. Sometimes God forgives people that we don’t necessarily think deserve God’s forgiveness. If God is truly, “a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” sometimes God is going to forgive people that we don’t want God to. This story tells us that God’s forgiveness is open to everyone, regardless of who they are or whether we like them or how they got invited to the party. Even the Ninevites, even Jonah, even us. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
"Father, Forgive Them": A Sermon on Matthew 18:21-35
Poor Peter seems to be at it again this morning. After totally nailing who Jesus is, he seems to spend the rest of Matthew’s Gospel not quite getting the point being made. So last week, if you remember, Jesus laid out for his disciples what they were to do if conflict arose in their communities. How they were to approach each other, talk it out, and try to move forward. This morning we hear that Peter took the opportunity to sort of push the question a little bit. OK, Peter says, so this whole talk it out thing is great, but really, let’s talk details. If someone sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive them? Like seven times? Which, if you think about it, is kind of a lot of times. Takes seven times to make a habit. Also, interesting fact, seven is a number that shows up a lot in the scriptures. God created the world in seven days; the Israelites marched around Jericho seven times, for seven days, holding seven trumpets; it took Solomon seven years to build the temple. Seven is a number that represented completeness in the Israeli tradition. So there’s some theological backing to Peter picking seven as a “complete” amount of forgiveness. It’s a good, solid, biblical number of times. But Jesus ups the ante. Not seven, but seventy-seven, or seventy times seven. Either way, the point is multiple sevens, which is like more than completeness.
The point Jesus makes with Peter here is that there is a fundamental difference between the account-based system Peter is proposing and the radical nature of God’s forgiveness. The problem really comes down to a problem of scale. As humans, we are finite creatures in a finite system. We exist in a world bound by space and time, numbers and math. There’s nothing good or bad about this, it simply is. In fact, there’s really something sacred about it, because in the incarnation, Jesus came and bound himself by the same finiteness. When Jesus was on earth, he was under the same laws of gravity and physics that affect all of us. So when Peter tried to assess a number to forgiveness, it comes out of this reality of his finitude. There really is only so much to go around. But here’s the problem Peter’s facing, God is not bound by the same finitude that we are. So God’s reality exists on level that is not mathematical or logical. To help make sense of this, Jesus uses a parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owed him ten thousand talents.
I tried to translate ten thousand talents into modern currency to give you a sense of the comparison, and here’s what I learned. A talent was worth like fifteen years worth of wages for an average laborer. But more than that, a talent was the largest increment of money that existed. And the concept of infinity as a number didn’t exist yet, so ten thousand, a myriad in the Greek, is the largest number that there was. So ten thousand talents is the largest possible amount of money that there could be. The slave could not owe the master more money, because there wasn’t an amount higher than this. You know when two kids are bickering about something and the first one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity, and then the other one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity plus infinity. That’s basically what Jesus has done to Peter’s argument with this parable. It’s a reduction to absurdity.
And even though the slave owed the king basically all of the money that existed, when the slave begged for mercy, the king granted it. Which is pretty amazing. The king just threw away all that he was owed. And we might have judged the king for his poor money management, were it not for what happened next. That very same slave, having just been set free from this astronomical debt, comes across someone who owes him money. One hundred denarii is the debt, about a hundred days wages. So no small sum either, but not all of the money that had ever existed. And we would expect for the forgiven man to show mercy, right. That would be just, that would be fair. It would be a way for the man to pay back for the mercy he’d received.
But he didn’t. Instead he demanded what he was owed, throwing his fellow slave in prison until he could recoup his losses. And everyone was, of course, disgusted with the first slave, and went and told the master. And the master called the first slave in, chastised him for his failure to show mercy, and threw him in prison. And so too, ends the parable, will your heavenly father do to you, if you do not show mercy. Pretty cut and dry.
At least, it seems pretty cut and dry. But here’s a couple things about parables. First, because we are analytical beings, we tend to try to make parables allegorical, to assign each character a roll. God is the king, or the farmer, or the sower, we the servant, the plant, the weed, angels are harvesters, etc. And that works, to a point. But one theologian I love remarks that using parables to explain concepts is like using riddles to give directions to the airport. Parables get us thinking in the right direction but trying to make these sorts of direct connections always sell them short. God instead exists for us in the intersections of the parables, in the ways the characters come together and in how those interactions change us.
Second, parables can be read as either prescriptive or descriptive. We tend to read them prescriptively, if you do this, then this will happen. But in the Greek, “if” and “when” are the same word. So sometimes parables are more descriptive. They don’t describe the consequences of our actions; they describe the world we already live in.
So what if this parable Jesus shares this morning, might be more descriptive than prescriptive. What if that last like is better read this is “when you don’t forgive” rather than “if you don’t forgive”? What if Jesus is telling Peter, when you do not forgive, you hold yourself captive?
All of us carry scars of places where we have been hurt by other children of God. Some scars are visible, some are invisible, but all of us carry them. And God wants desperately to heal those scars, to bring us to a place of wholeness. But those scars came at a cost, a cost we had to pay. And when we are focused in recouping our cost, when our hands and our hearts are full of what we are owed, we don’t have space to hold the gift of mercy and grace which God is extending to us. But when we are able to let go, when we are able to open our hands and our hearts, we find that we have been invited into a different system altogether, a system that is based not on accounting, but on abundance. That less than what the other person deserves is somehow more than we can imagine.
That’s the power of forgiveness. Not that it changes the other person, but that it changes us. Forgiveness is not about love, or even about liking. It’s not about restoring relationship necessarily, and it’s certainly not about forgetting. But it is about deciding that the past will not hold you captive anymore, that whoever has sinned against you will not be permitted to live rent free in your soul, and you will live into the promised reign of God. Forgiveness is about giving up the pain so that God can heal your hurts, mend your scars.
This is hard, God knows it’s hard. Forgiveness takes time, like love it cannot be forced. But we can practice forgiveness. We can practice and like any muscle it will grow stronger. And seventy times seven times God is with us in the practice, coaxing us into an existence that is more than we thought we deserved, more than we think we could be.
As I was prepping for this sermon I came across the story of the first African-American to integrate the New Orleans public school system. Ruby Bridges was six years old when her parents enrolled her in the all-white William Franz Elementary School. The public response was swift and immediate. Looking back, Bridges remarked that the first day she drove to her new school she, “thought it was Marti Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of thing goes on in New Orleans at Marti Gras.” She couldn’t imagine all that commotion was about her. The first day the chaos was so great she spent the entire day sitting alone in the school office, surrounded by U.S. Marshals. By the second day, every other student had been pulled from the school, and every teacher but one had resigned. Ruby Bridges was the only student at William Franz Elementary.
But while the students were gone, the crowds outside only got worse. Ruby continued to be escorted to and from school by U.S. Marshals. Crowds shouted obscenities and set up disturbing displays, people threatened her home and her family. Through all of this, little Ruby Bridges marched to school.
To support Ruby through this time, famous child psychiatrist Robert Coles offered to meet with Ruby once a week in her home. On one meeting, Coles remarked he’d noticed Ruby reciting something under her breath every day as she walked to and from the school. Ruby responded that she was reciting a line from the Bible her parents had taught her to say, a line that they hoped would shield their young daughter from the hatred and the violence that she faced every day. Every day, twice a day, as she walked through angry crowds to integrate her school so other kids would not have to suffer as she had, Ruby Bridges recited, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
That is the power of forgiveness. It is a power that says your sin, your anger, will not have control over me. Not because I am weak, but because I am strong. It is a power that allows us to stand up in the very face of evil and live forward into the coming kingdom of God. Amen.
The point Jesus makes with Peter here is that there is a fundamental difference between the account-based system Peter is proposing and the radical nature of God’s forgiveness. The problem really comes down to a problem of scale. As humans, we are finite creatures in a finite system. We exist in a world bound by space and time, numbers and math. There’s nothing good or bad about this, it simply is. In fact, there’s really something sacred about it, because in the incarnation, Jesus came and bound himself by the same finiteness. When Jesus was on earth, he was under the same laws of gravity and physics that affect all of us. So when Peter tried to assess a number to forgiveness, it comes out of this reality of his finitude. There really is only so much to go around. But here’s the problem Peter’s facing, God is not bound by the same finitude that we are. So God’s reality exists on level that is not mathematical or logical. To help make sense of this, Jesus uses a parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owed him ten thousand talents.
I tried to translate ten thousand talents into modern currency to give you a sense of the comparison, and here’s what I learned. A talent was worth like fifteen years worth of wages for an average laborer. But more than that, a talent was the largest increment of money that existed. And the concept of infinity as a number didn’t exist yet, so ten thousand, a myriad in the Greek, is the largest number that there was. So ten thousand talents is the largest possible amount of money that there could be. The slave could not owe the master more money, because there wasn’t an amount higher than this. You know when two kids are bickering about something and the first one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity, and then the other one is like, yeah, well I’m right times infinity plus infinity. That’s basically what Jesus has done to Peter’s argument with this parable. It’s a reduction to absurdity.
And even though the slave owed the king basically all of the money that existed, when the slave begged for mercy, the king granted it. Which is pretty amazing. The king just threw away all that he was owed. And we might have judged the king for his poor money management, were it not for what happened next. That very same slave, having just been set free from this astronomical debt, comes across someone who owes him money. One hundred denarii is the debt, about a hundred days wages. So no small sum either, but not all of the money that had ever existed. And we would expect for the forgiven man to show mercy, right. That would be just, that would be fair. It would be a way for the man to pay back for the mercy he’d received.
But he didn’t. Instead he demanded what he was owed, throwing his fellow slave in prison until he could recoup his losses. And everyone was, of course, disgusted with the first slave, and went and told the master. And the master called the first slave in, chastised him for his failure to show mercy, and threw him in prison. And so too, ends the parable, will your heavenly father do to you, if you do not show mercy. Pretty cut and dry.
At least, it seems pretty cut and dry. But here’s a couple things about parables. First, because we are analytical beings, we tend to try to make parables allegorical, to assign each character a roll. God is the king, or the farmer, or the sower, we the servant, the plant, the weed, angels are harvesters, etc. And that works, to a point. But one theologian I love remarks that using parables to explain concepts is like using riddles to give directions to the airport. Parables get us thinking in the right direction but trying to make these sorts of direct connections always sell them short. God instead exists for us in the intersections of the parables, in the ways the characters come together and in how those interactions change us.
Second, parables can be read as either prescriptive or descriptive. We tend to read them prescriptively, if you do this, then this will happen. But in the Greek, “if” and “when” are the same word. So sometimes parables are more descriptive. They don’t describe the consequences of our actions; they describe the world we already live in.
So what if this parable Jesus shares this morning, might be more descriptive than prescriptive. What if that last like is better read this is “when you don’t forgive” rather than “if you don’t forgive”? What if Jesus is telling Peter, when you do not forgive, you hold yourself captive?
All of us carry scars of places where we have been hurt by other children of God. Some scars are visible, some are invisible, but all of us carry them. And God wants desperately to heal those scars, to bring us to a place of wholeness. But those scars came at a cost, a cost we had to pay. And when we are focused in recouping our cost, when our hands and our hearts are full of what we are owed, we don’t have space to hold the gift of mercy and grace which God is extending to us. But when we are able to let go, when we are able to open our hands and our hearts, we find that we have been invited into a different system altogether, a system that is based not on accounting, but on abundance. That less than what the other person deserves is somehow more than we can imagine.
That’s the power of forgiveness. Not that it changes the other person, but that it changes us. Forgiveness is not about love, or even about liking. It’s not about restoring relationship necessarily, and it’s certainly not about forgetting. But it is about deciding that the past will not hold you captive anymore, that whoever has sinned against you will not be permitted to live rent free in your soul, and you will live into the promised reign of God. Forgiveness is about giving up the pain so that God can heal your hurts, mend your scars.
This is hard, God knows it’s hard. Forgiveness takes time, like love it cannot be forced. But we can practice forgiveness. We can practice and like any muscle it will grow stronger. And seventy times seven times God is with us in the practice, coaxing us into an existence that is more than we thought we deserved, more than we think we could be.
As I was prepping for this sermon I came across the story of the first African-American to integrate the New Orleans public school system. Ruby Bridges was six years old when her parents enrolled her in the all-white William Franz Elementary School. The public response was swift and immediate. Looking back, Bridges remarked that the first day she drove to her new school she, “thought it was Marti Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of thing goes on in New Orleans at Marti Gras.” She couldn’t imagine all that commotion was about her. The first day the chaos was so great she spent the entire day sitting alone in the school office, surrounded by U.S. Marshals. By the second day, every other student had been pulled from the school, and every teacher but one had resigned. Ruby Bridges was the only student at William Franz Elementary.
But while the students were gone, the crowds outside only got worse. Ruby continued to be escorted to and from school by U.S. Marshals. Crowds shouted obscenities and set up disturbing displays, people threatened her home and her family. Through all of this, little Ruby Bridges marched to school.
To support Ruby through this time, famous child psychiatrist Robert Coles offered to meet with Ruby once a week in her home. On one meeting, Coles remarked he’d noticed Ruby reciting something under her breath every day as she walked to and from the school. Ruby responded that she was reciting a line from the Bible her parents had taught her to say, a line that they hoped would shield their young daughter from the hatred and the violence that she faced every day. Every day, twice a day, as she walked through angry crowds to integrate her school so other kids would not have to suffer as she had, Ruby Bridges recited, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”
That is the power of forgiveness. It is a power that says your sin, your anger, will not have control over me. Not because I am weak, but because I am strong. It is a power that allows us to stand up in the very face of evil and live forward into the coming kingdom of God. Amen.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Joan Rivers, Romans, and the Uncontainable Love of God: A Sermon on Matthew 18:15-20
Karl Barth is quoted as saying that preachers should approach their sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. I’m pretty sure this sermon is not what Barth had in mind when he said that. The news story that’s captured my attention this week is the unexpected passing of Joan Rivers. Not news I ever thought I’d share in a sermon. Mainly because, truth be told, I never found Joan Rivers all that funny. I guess I’d known of her before, but most of my exposure came from watching Fashion Police with my roommate in LA. She liked it, and I liked watching bad TV with my roommate more than other, more productive, things I could have been doing. But I found Rivers’ humor too caustic, and I really could care less about celebrity fashion.
Because I’d mainly associated Joan Rivers with red carpet fashion criticism, I was at first amazed this week when everyone from NPR to 20/20 covered her life. Then as I listened to some of these stories, I was amazed again, this time to discover that Joan Rivers was a comedic icon. Turns out, and maybe you all knew this but I most certainly did not, that Joan Rivers was a trailblazer. In an industry that had been completely male dominated, Joan Rivers really paved the way for female comedians. And she was not just a pioneer for women in comedy but for comedy itself. Her crass, caustic style created stand-up comedy as we know it today, as a means of social commentary and a forum for social change.
In one of the NPR interviews, Rivers shared how when she started in comedy there were all these subjects that couldn’t be talked about. But instead of shying away from these taboo subjects, Rivers came out and made jokes about them. And, I’ll give you, many of the jokes were insensitive and probably inappropriate. But what she discovered in doing this was that by talking, by joking, about issues, it really deflated the power that they had. Suddenly these subjects that had been “off-limits” were able to be discussed openly and worked through in healthier and more productive ways. Through Joan Rivers and people like her, comedy became a form of power, a tool for embracing social issues and taking some of the mystery out of them so they could be dealt with and healed.
But what, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with our readings for today? Well, I’ll tell you. At its very core, what comedians like Joan Rivers discovered was that our words have power. What we chose to say, but sometimes even more so what goes unsaid. When we don’t talk about something, when we ignore it, push it to the side, hope it goes away, that very act of not bringing something to the light can give it even more power than if we had done the initially harder work of dealing with it upfront.
Unfortunately, that’s not how our Gospel reading for this morning often tends to be read. Instead of offering a framework for conversation, “Matthew 18” becomes a slam text to justify bullying. Have you ever heard this? When Matthew 18 gets used like a verb, a way to justify ganging up on someone we disagree with? I think you’re a sinner, so I tell you that. And if you don’t agree, I bring some buddies, and we tell you you’re a sinner. And if you still don’t agree, we get the church to tell you you’re wrong. And if you still don’t agree, we shun you. Right, that’s what treating someone like a tax collector or a Gentile means? I wish I was exaggerating; I’m not. So often the Bible gets used as this tool to tell people that they are wrong or bad, and that God doesn’t love them, and we don’t have to either.
But here’s the huge, glaring problem with that way of reading of this scripture. The Canaanite woman from the story last week, she was a Gentile. And Matthew, the guy for whom this Gospel is named, he was a tax collector. See the trend here, Jesus didn’t shun tax collectors and Gentiles, he ate with them. He healed their sick. He invited them to travel along with him, to learn from him, to be in relationship with him. He loved them.
Sounds like our Epistle reading from Romans, where Paul talks about how the Roman community is to relate to each other. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul wrote. All the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, all of them can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul goes on to say, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Which is great, right. Love each other, don’t hide things in the dark, but bring things to the light. Right, it’s an excellent method for living in community and for being in relationship, just love each other.
Of course, this is like way harder than Paul tries to make it sound. It’s one thing to say we need to love each other, but it’s a totally different thing to actually do it. Especially when the other person seems so darn unlovable.
So I think this Gospel reading is really less about setting up a set of rules regarding how to keep conflict out of our communities, and more about creating a space so open, so full of light, that the darkness that hides within us has no place to flourish. I think maybe, believe it or not, Jesus is encouraging his disciples to be a little bit more like Joan Rivers, a little bit less afraid to say hard things, even if they might be misunderstood, because there is power in speaking truth, because our communities, our relationships are stronger, if we are willing and able to be open and honest with one another.
Here’s the thing. God loves us like crazy. Like more than we can even imagine. And so great is God’s love for us, that this love cannot be contained in a relationship between God and us, it spills out into communities. So much does God love us that God wants us, needs us even, to experience love through each other. And the power in this mutual accountability is that the sin that resides within us, the sin, the pain, the brokenness, that can fester in the darkness of isolation, has nowhere to hide when we come together in communities. When we love one another, when we lift each other up, when we support each other, when we give words to our pain and we hold the words of each other’s pain, that brokenness is driven away in the grace and the love and the forgiveness of God.
That, I think, is the lesson Jesus had for his disciples in this text. That we are stronger together, we are lighter together, that we are more powerful together. That in the love and the grace and the forgiveness of authentic community, the powers of darkness have nowhere to go. It’s hard. We make mistakes, we break relationships, we hurt each other. We’re human. God knows that. But God also knows that only by bringing these hurts to the light of forgiveness can we receive healing, not just for each other, but more importantly, for ourselves. So thanks be to God for people who are willing to speak truth to power, even though it hurts. And thanks be to God for loving us so much that God gave us each other. Amen.
Because I’d mainly associated Joan Rivers with red carpet fashion criticism, I was at first amazed this week when everyone from NPR to 20/20 covered her life. Then as I listened to some of these stories, I was amazed again, this time to discover that Joan Rivers was a comedic icon. Turns out, and maybe you all knew this but I most certainly did not, that Joan Rivers was a trailblazer. In an industry that had been completely male dominated, Joan Rivers really paved the way for female comedians. And she was not just a pioneer for women in comedy but for comedy itself. Her crass, caustic style created stand-up comedy as we know it today, as a means of social commentary and a forum for social change.
In one of the NPR interviews, Rivers shared how when she started in comedy there were all these subjects that couldn’t be talked about. But instead of shying away from these taboo subjects, Rivers came out and made jokes about them. And, I’ll give you, many of the jokes were insensitive and probably inappropriate. But what she discovered in doing this was that by talking, by joking, about issues, it really deflated the power that they had. Suddenly these subjects that had been “off-limits” were able to be discussed openly and worked through in healthier and more productive ways. Through Joan Rivers and people like her, comedy became a form of power, a tool for embracing social issues and taking some of the mystery out of them so they could be dealt with and healed.
But what, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with our readings for today? Well, I’ll tell you. At its very core, what comedians like Joan Rivers discovered was that our words have power. What we chose to say, but sometimes even more so what goes unsaid. When we don’t talk about something, when we ignore it, push it to the side, hope it goes away, that very act of not bringing something to the light can give it even more power than if we had done the initially harder work of dealing with it upfront.
Unfortunately, that’s not how our Gospel reading for this morning often tends to be read. Instead of offering a framework for conversation, “Matthew 18” becomes a slam text to justify bullying. Have you ever heard this? When Matthew 18 gets used like a verb, a way to justify ganging up on someone we disagree with? I think you’re a sinner, so I tell you that. And if you don’t agree, I bring some buddies, and we tell you you’re a sinner. And if you still don’t agree, we get the church to tell you you’re wrong. And if you still don’t agree, we shun you. Right, that’s what treating someone like a tax collector or a Gentile means? I wish I was exaggerating; I’m not. So often the Bible gets used as this tool to tell people that they are wrong or bad, and that God doesn’t love them, and we don’t have to either.
But here’s the huge, glaring problem with that way of reading of this scripture. The Canaanite woman from the story last week, she was a Gentile. And Matthew, the guy for whom this Gospel is named, he was a tax collector. See the trend here, Jesus didn’t shun tax collectors and Gentiles, he ate with them. He healed their sick. He invited them to travel along with him, to learn from him, to be in relationship with him. He loved them.
Sounds like our Epistle reading from Romans, where Paul talks about how the Roman community is to relate to each other. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul wrote. All the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, all of them can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul goes on to say, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Which is great, right. Love each other, don’t hide things in the dark, but bring things to the light. Right, it’s an excellent method for living in community and for being in relationship, just love each other.
Of course, this is like way harder than Paul tries to make it sound. It’s one thing to say we need to love each other, but it’s a totally different thing to actually do it. Especially when the other person seems so darn unlovable.
So I think this Gospel reading is really less about setting up a set of rules regarding how to keep conflict out of our communities, and more about creating a space so open, so full of light, that the darkness that hides within us has no place to flourish. I think maybe, believe it or not, Jesus is encouraging his disciples to be a little bit more like Joan Rivers, a little bit less afraid to say hard things, even if they might be misunderstood, because there is power in speaking truth, because our communities, our relationships are stronger, if we are willing and able to be open and honest with one another.
Here’s the thing. God loves us like crazy. Like more than we can even imagine. And so great is God’s love for us, that this love cannot be contained in a relationship between God and us, it spills out into communities. So much does God love us that God wants us, needs us even, to experience love through each other. And the power in this mutual accountability is that the sin that resides within us, the sin, the pain, the brokenness, that can fester in the darkness of isolation, has nowhere to hide when we come together in communities. When we love one another, when we lift each other up, when we support each other, when we give words to our pain and we hold the words of each other’s pain, that brokenness is driven away in the grace and the love and the forgiveness of God.
That, I think, is the lesson Jesus had for his disciples in this text. That we are stronger together, we are lighter together, that we are more powerful together. That in the love and the grace and the forgiveness of authentic community, the powers of darkness have nowhere to go. It’s hard. We make mistakes, we break relationships, we hurt each other. We’re human. God knows that. But God also knows that only by bringing these hurts to the light of forgiveness can we receive healing, not just for each other, but more importantly, for ourselves. So thanks be to God for people who are willing to speak truth to power, even though it hurts. And thanks be to God for loving us so much that God gave us each other. Amen.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Pick Up Your Cross: A Sermon on Matthew 16:21-28
Peter’s kind of had a rough go in the gospel readings lately. A few weeks ago there was that whole “walking on water” attempt/debacle where he like almost drown in a storm, and then across history scholars chastised him for having “little faith” and getting out of his boat. And last week he had that whole epiphany moment of identifying Jesus as the Messiah, and getting called the rock of the church, only to this week have Jesus call him a stumbling block, and even Satan. I joked about it last week, calling Peter a “wishy-washy” rock, but the truth is, you can’t fault Peter his response here.
Think about what’s happened here. We’re at chapter 16 of Matthew’s Gospel, so Peter’s been traveling with Jesus for a long time now. He’s seen Jesus teaching, heard him preaching, watched him heal. He’s even seen Christ manifested through Peter’s own life, when Peter himself distributed five loaves of bread and two fish to feed the multitudes. Peter’s experience in the world up until he met Jesus had been pretty tough. He was a subsistence fisherman, a poor freeman in a world of class politics, a Jew under Roman occupation, his opportunity to have any life other than the hard-scrabble one he knew simply didn’t exist. And then Jesus appeared. And sudden Peter knew he could be more than that. Suddenly Peter saw the promise of the reign of God. He saw a world where the blind saw, the lame walked, the sick were healed. He saw a world where there was enough food to go around, where everyone, no matter their background, had value. And last week we heard Peter testify to that realization, that in Jesus the world as Peter knew it would be changed.
But this week, from where Peter is standing, Jesus seems to be pulling the wool out from under him. Peter’s seen, and heard, and learned, and understood all these amazing things that Jesus is about, when suddenly Jesus starts talking about how he’s going to suffer, be sentenced to death, and die. And with those words, Peter just feels his world slam shut. If Jesus is dead, everything Peter’s experienced will stop. If Jesus is dead, the sick will not be healed. If Jesus is dead, the hungry will not be fed. If Jesus is dead, oppression will continue. All these dreams that Peter thought would be happening, the promise of the coming reign of God, with Jesus’ pronouncement about his death, Peter feels all those dreams die in an instant, come crashing down around him along with what remained of the life he once knew.
So Peter lashed out at Jesus. Not because Peter is dumb or a jerk or not faithful, but because that’s what we humans tend to do when we’re hurt or scared or angry. No, Jesus, no, Peter said, and even in the text you can hear the anxiety in his voice, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
Jesus rebuked Peter, because Peter has made a crucial error here. What Peter demonstrated in this comment was that even as he recognized Jesus as the Messiah, as the very Son of God, his vision of who Jesus is, is still too small. Peter saw Jesus as coming to save him, his time, his community, his people. But Jesus’ vision was not just for Peter, or for the Jews, or even for the first century. Jesus came to change the very foundations of the world, the very way in which creation itself relates to God its creator. Peter missed the forest for the trees, if I can simplify it down that much. Peter had experienced so much good, so much salvation, in his travels with Jesus, that he was terrified to let it go. But what Peter missed is that what Jesus was about was even bigger, even greater, than the things that Peter had already experienced. And only by letting Jesus go, only through Jesus death, could Peter, could the world, experience the fullness of God’s promise in Jesus, a death that defeats death, and a resurrection that leads to life eternal. Not just for Peter, but for the world, across time and space, forever.
That’s the thing about Jesus, he’s always bigger than we can imagine. He’s always more than we hoped for, greater than our expectations, deeper than our understandings. So much so that it’s scary sometimes, even terrifying, to understand the depth and the breadth of this kind of love. It’s more than we can fathom. So sometimes, like Peter, we try to put limits around this love, try to determine who is in or who is out, and what we have to do to make sure we’re in on this action of salvation. Because it feels like there must only be a finite amount of Jesus to go around. Peter tried to make Jesus about the people who knew Christ in the flesh. We try to make it about people who think like us, or act like us, or fit whatever definition of being right that we understand. It’s well-intentioned sin, but it’s sin nonetheless. Jesus love is bigger than the boundaries we try to draw around it, his salvation is more expansive than the requirements we try to place on it. This scripture invites Peter and us to hold lightly onto Jesus, or better stated, onto our expectations of who Jesus is and how Jesus will work. When we try to pin Jesus down, we are libel to miss him entirely. But if we open our hands wide and let Jesus roam where he may, we find ourselves drawn deeper and closer into the love that he is.
And then we get to the bit about picking up the cross and following. And I find myself cringing inside, because it feels like all these promises I have about how Jesus works in the world come crashing down here in the same way that it must have felt for Peter when Jesus told Peter that he was going to die. If Jesus died to set me free, why then to follow Jesus do I have to pick up a cross?
And part of my struggles with this section is I think that we as a church, and I’m talking about the church here, like the church across history, have done a horrible job with this passage, and with this idea in general. There’s two main branches of Christian thought, and without going into any sort of detail, there’s the moralistic Christianity I touched on last week, that idea that if we do good things than God will do good things for us, that God is about making us feel good. And that’s of course a problem because sometimes you can do everything right, and things can still go wrong, and that doesn’t mean that God is not still with you. But the line of thinking that’s come out of this section I think is even more dangerous than the sort of “feel good” Christianity we talked about last week, this idea that the Christian life is all about suffering. And that anything bad that happens to you or to the world, you just have to sit with it, because it’s your cross to bear. But see, I don’t think that’s a cross, I think that’s a burden. And burdens, brothers and sisters, we are meant to bear together, burdens Christ bears with us. Jesus says later in Matthew’s Gospel, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If something is hurting you, holding you down, calling you less than you are, making you feel like you do not have value in the kingdom of God, that is not your cross, that is your burden, and I promise you however you may feel, you do not bear that burden alone, but Jesus Christ bears it with you.
But a cross is different. A cross is something you pick up. No one can tell you what your cross is but God, and because of free will, God lets you make that decision on your own. Because here’s the thing about the cross. Jesus chose his. He chose to suffer, he chose to die, because the benefits for humanity outweighed for him the cost. Jesus didn’t pick up his cross because he needed saving, he picked up his cross because we needed saving. That is the truth about crosses. The crosses we pick up are for the sake of the world, for the sake of each other. We pick up crosses because caring for each other is the kind of life Christ calls us to; it’s the kind of life Christ modeled for us. And here’s the other difference about crosses, picking up our cross gives us power. When Jesus took up his cross, the very foundations of the earth shook. And when we pick up our crosses, like Jesus said to Peter last week, the very gates of hell themselves will shake. Amen.
Think about what’s happened here. We’re at chapter 16 of Matthew’s Gospel, so Peter’s been traveling with Jesus for a long time now. He’s seen Jesus teaching, heard him preaching, watched him heal. He’s even seen Christ manifested through Peter’s own life, when Peter himself distributed five loaves of bread and two fish to feed the multitudes. Peter’s experience in the world up until he met Jesus had been pretty tough. He was a subsistence fisherman, a poor freeman in a world of class politics, a Jew under Roman occupation, his opportunity to have any life other than the hard-scrabble one he knew simply didn’t exist. And then Jesus appeared. And sudden Peter knew he could be more than that. Suddenly Peter saw the promise of the reign of God. He saw a world where the blind saw, the lame walked, the sick were healed. He saw a world where there was enough food to go around, where everyone, no matter their background, had value. And last week we heard Peter testify to that realization, that in Jesus the world as Peter knew it would be changed.
But this week, from where Peter is standing, Jesus seems to be pulling the wool out from under him. Peter’s seen, and heard, and learned, and understood all these amazing things that Jesus is about, when suddenly Jesus starts talking about how he’s going to suffer, be sentenced to death, and die. And with those words, Peter just feels his world slam shut. If Jesus is dead, everything Peter’s experienced will stop. If Jesus is dead, the sick will not be healed. If Jesus is dead, the hungry will not be fed. If Jesus is dead, oppression will continue. All these dreams that Peter thought would be happening, the promise of the coming reign of God, with Jesus’ pronouncement about his death, Peter feels all those dreams die in an instant, come crashing down around him along with what remained of the life he once knew.
So Peter lashed out at Jesus. Not because Peter is dumb or a jerk or not faithful, but because that’s what we humans tend to do when we’re hurt or scared or angry. No, Jesus, no, Peter said, and even in the text you can hear the anxiety in his voice, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
Jesus rebuked Peter, because Peter has made a crucial error here. What Peter demonstrated in this comment was that even as he recognized Jesus as the Messiah, as the very Son of God, his vision of who Jesus is, is still too small. Peter saw Jesus as coming to save him, his time, his community, his people. But Jesus’ vision was not just for Peter, or for the Jews, or even for the first century. Jesus came to change the very foundations of the world, the very way in which creation itself relates to God its creator. Peter missed the forest for the trees, if I can simplify it down that much. Peter had experienced so much good, so much salvation, in his travels with Jesus, that he was terrified to let it go. But what Peter missed is that what Jesus was about was even bigger, even greater, than the things that Peter had already experienced. And only by letting Jesus go, only through Jesus death, could Peter, could the world, experience the fullness of God’s promise in Jesus, a death that defeats death, and a resurrection that leads to life eternal. Not just for Peter, but for the world, across time and space, forever.
That’s the thing about Jesus, he’s always bigger than we can imagine. He’s always more than we hoped for, greater than our expectations, deeper than our understandings. So much so that it’s scary sometimes, even terrifying, to understand the depth and the breadth of this kind of love. It’s more than we can fathom. So sometimes, like Peter, we try to put limits around this love, try to determine who is in or who is out, and what we have to do to make sure we’re in on this action of salvation. Because it feels like there must only be a finite amount of Jesus to go around. Peter tried to make Jesus about the people who knew Christ in the flesh. We try to make it about people who think like us, or act like us, or fit whatever definition of being right that we understand. It’s well-intentioned sin, but it’s sin nonetheless. Jesus love is bigger than the boundaries we try to draw around it, his salvation is more expansive than the requirements we try to place on it. This scripture invites Peter and us to hold lightly onto Jesus, or better stated, onto our expectations of who Jesus is and how Jesus will work. When we try to pin Jesus down, we are libel to miss him entirely. But if we open our hands wide and let Jesus roam where he may, we find ourselves drawn deeper and closer into the love that he is.
And then we get to the bit about picking up the cross and following. And I find myself cringing inside, because it feels like all these promises I have about how Jesus works in the world come crashing down here in the same way that it must have felt for Peter when Jesus told Peter that he was going to die. If Jesus died to set me free, why then to follow Jesus do I have to pick up a cross?
And part of my struggles with this section is I think that we as a church, and I’m talking about the church here, like the church across history, have done a horrible job with this passage, and with this idea in general. There’s two main branches of Christian thought, and without going into any sort of detail, there’s the moralistic Christianity I touched on last week, that idea that if we do good things than God will do good things for us, that God is about making us feel good. And that’s of course a problem because sometimes you can do everything right, and things can still go wrong, and that doesn’t mean that God is not still with you. But the line of thinking that’s come out of this section I think is even more dangerous than the sort of “feel good” Christianity we talked about last week, this idea that the Christian life is all about suffering. And that anything bad that happens to you or to the world, you just have to sit with it, because it’s your cross to bear. But see, I don’t think that’s a cross, I think that’s a burden. And burdens, brothers and sisters, we are meant to bear together, burdens Christ bears with us. Jesus says later in Matthew’s Gospel, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If something is hurting you, holding you down, calling you less than you are, making you feel like you do not have value in the kingdom of God, that is not your cross, that is your burden, and I promise you however you may feel, you do not bear that burden alone, but Jesus Christ bears it with you.
But a cross is different. A cross is something you pick up. No one can tell you what your cross is but God, and because of free will, God lets you make that decision on your own. Because here’s the thing about the cross. Jesus chose his. He chose to suffer, he chose to die, because the benefits for humanity outweighed for him the cost. Jesus didn’t pick up his cross because he needed saving, he picked up his cross because we needed saving. That is the truth about crosses. The crosses we pick up are for the sake of the world, for the sake of each other. We pick up crosses because caring for each other is the kind of life Christ calls us to; it’s the kind of life Christ modeled for us. And here’s the other difference about crosses, picking up our cross gives us power. When Jesus took up his cross, the very foundations of the earth shook. And when we pick up our crosses, like Jesus said to Peter last week, the very gates of hell themselves will shake. Amen.
Monday, August 25, 2014
"Who Do You Say That I Am?": A Sermon on Matthew 16:13-20
In our Gospel reading for this morning Jesus poses two questions to his disciples. “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” [pause] “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” As I sat with this text this week, those two questions kept rolling around in my mind.
I recently read an article with the shock-worthy title: “More Teens Becoming ‘Fake’ Christians.” The article was based on a book by Kenda Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dean argued that kids are walking away from the church because they are being taught a “mutant” form of Christianity which Dean called “moralistic therapeutic deism,” which is fancy theologian talk essentially meaning this view of God as some kind of a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem. Dean drew these conclusions from a study where she interviewed 33 hundred Christian teens. From these interviews she found that though three out of four teens claim to be Christian, only half practice their faith, less than half think it’s important, and most could not articulate what they believed. Most teens surveyed felt God simply wanted them to feel good and be good.
Dean called the research, “the most depressing summer of her life,” remarking, “If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust. Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about.” Elizabeth Corrie, a professor at Emory Theological Seminary, agrees with Dean, saying that “teens want to be challenged; they want their tough questions taken on.” Corrie remarked in the article, “We think that they want cake, but they actually want steak and potatoes, and we keep giving them cake.”
Dean did interview some teens who were passionate about their faith. Among those youth Dean noticed four distinct characteristics. First, they had a passionate story about God they could share. Second, they had a deep connection to a faith community. Third, they felt a sense of purpose in their lives. And fourth, they felt a sense of hope.
Dean’s study focused specifically on American teenagers, but her findings kept coming back to me as I wrestled with the texts for this morning where Jesus essentially asked his disciples, “What do you believe about me?” Could I do any better than the kids Dean interviewed in articulating my own faith? Did the disciples? Did Peter? What would I answer, what would you answer, if Jesus posed the question to you, “Who do you say that I am?”
What Jesus is asking the disciples about this morning is about confession. Now, because the English language is not at all confusing (sarcasm), we use the word confession twice in worship and mean two completely different things. We used it in the confession and forgiveness at the beginning of the service, where we confess, we admit, our sins, and hear God’s forgiveness. And then after the sermon, when it is time for the Apostles’ Creed, I will invite you to “Join with the whole church in confessing our faith.” Confession there means to make a statement of belief. It is this second kind of confession Jesus is talking about in the reading, he’s asking the disciples what professions people are making about Jesus, and what the disciples themselves believe to be true about Jesus.
Peter answered Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus called Peter a rock, the rock on whom Jesus would build the church. A foundation so strong that even the gates of hell itself would not prevail against it. So clearly Peter got the answer right. He passed the “recognizing Jesus as God” litmus test and got all the powers and the glory that come with it.
Except, here’s the thing about Peter and this pronouncement by Jesus that Peter is the rock of the church, Peter is like the wishy-washiest rock you ever saw. He’s like that one stone in a creek that looks all stable until you reach it, and then as soon as you step on it, it shifts to the side and dumps you on your knees in the water. Spoiler alert: next week we will read the very next scene in the Gospel where Jesus is foretelling the crucifixion, and Peter totally gets it wrong, to the point where Jesus has to finally turn around and essentially tell Peter off. So make sure to tune in next week for another exciting installment of Peter: Not the Stablest Rock.
But this week Peter made a confession of faith, and Jesus praised him for that. And even with Peter’s constant failings and misunderstandings, he got to keep the nickname. I’ve been calling him Peter throughout the sermon for the sake of clarity, and the Gospel calls him Peter for the same reason, but if we flip back to Matthew 4, when Jesus called the disciples, we see that his name is really Simon. But no one really called him Simon after this moment in Matthew 16. Instead he was Peter, petros in the Greek, which literally means Rock.
So if Peter didn’t really get what he was saying, and Jesus had to know he didn’t, why did Jesus ask in the first place and why did Jesus praise Peter’s answer? I think it’s because we make confessions of faith not for Jesus, but for us. When Jesus asked the disciples who he was it wasn’t because Jesus needed the answer. Jesus knew who he was. He didn’t need his stumbly, wishy-washy disciples to tell him. But the disciples need to know who Jesus was. They had to believe, not just some sort of vague fuzzy notion, but in real, clear, concrete language that they could wrap their mouths around, even if their hearts and minds couldn’t always follow. Pastor David Lose says that “the confessions we offer aren’t words of praise to God but words of power that help root us in the love and possibility that Jesus offers.” Putting it in the framework of the article I was talking about earlier, the confession Peter offered was the story of faith that helped ground in him the sense of purpose in his life and the sense of hope that would keep him going through the pitfalls ahead. It didn’t mean he was going to get it right all the time, and it didn’t mean that bad things weren’t going to happen, but what it did mean was that when he faced challenges, the rock he could go back to was not his own foundation, but the foundation of Christ. He had language he could hold on to and a community to speak it with him when his heart and mind were weak.
So I want to leave you this morning with a challenge. To think about how you would answer the question Jesus posed, “Who do you say that I am?” Sit with it, wrestle with it, and then write down, in just a couple sentences, what you believe to be true about Jesus. This isn’t a test, I’m not asking to see your answers, I won’t collect anything next week. But my hope is that this could be something you can go back to when the world feels out of kilter. Something to help you find grounding again in the love and the grace of God.
Because it’s a hard question, I’ll go first. Bear in mind I’ve had too much school, so I apologize in advance that mine probably has too many big words in it. It would be a better confession if it was simpler, but as it feels pretty vulnerable to throw all this out to you, I hope you will be graceful about my pretentious language. So here’s what I believe:
• I believe that the incarnation-the Word made Flesh-means that God has experienced, and thus understands, everything about what it means to be human, joy yes, but also pain, fear, even doubt and loss.
• I believe that grace and niceness are not the same, that sometimes grace hurts but it is always life-giving.
• Along the same lines, I believe that carrying a cross and bearing a burden are two completely different things. Burdens are put upon us, and we are meant to bear them together. But crosses we choose. I believe that the only person besides you who can tell you what your cross is, is God, and God has given us the free will to choose our own cross. And if God isn’t going to tell us, no human gets to.
• I believe that Paul had it right in Romans, that nothing, not death or life, angels or demons, things present or things to come, not power, not height, not depth, or any other created thing, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
• I believe that in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, God promised that the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen. That there is always, always, life after death.
• And finally, I believe in the power of divine mystery. I believe that doubt is a part of faith. I believe I don’t have to “get it” all the time in order for my faith to be real.
There you go. It’s way too long and the language is more obscure than I’d like, but like I said, I’ve had too much school, please forgive me. Now I’ve told you what I believe, how about you? Who do you say that Christ is? Amen.
Sources:
John Blake, "Author: More Teens Becoming 'Fake' Christians," CNN.com (August 27, 2010), http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html (accessed August 20, 2014).
David Lose, "Pentecost 11A: Who Do You Say I Am?," ...in the Meantime, entry posted August 18, 2014, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/08/pentecost-11-a-who-do-you-say-i-am/ (accessed August 20, 2014).
I recently read an article with the shock-worthy title: “More Teens Becoming ‘Fake’ Christians.” The article was based on a book by Kenda Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dean argued that kids are walking away from the church because they are being taught a “mutant” form of Christianity which Dean called “moralistic therapeutic deism,” which is fancy theologian talk essentially meaning this view of God as some kind of a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem. Dean drew these conclusions from a study where she interviewed 33 hundred Christian teens. From these interviews she found that though three out of four teens claim to be Christian, only half practice their faith, less than half think it’s important, and most could not articulate what they believed. Most teens surveyed felt God simply wanted them to feel good and be good.
Dean called the research, “the most depressing summer of her life,” remarking, “If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust. Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about.” Elizabeth Corrie, a professor at Emory Theological Seminary, agrees with Dean, saying that “teens want to be challenged; they want their tough questions taken on.” Corrie remarked in the article, “We think that they want cake, but they actually want steak and potatoes, and we keep giving them cake.”
Dean did interview some teens who were passionate about their faith. Among those youth Dean noticed four distinct characteristics. First, they had a passionate story about God they could share. Second, they had a deep connection to a faith community. Third, they felt a sense of purpose in their lives. And fourth, they felt a sense of hope.
Dean’s study focused specifically on American teenagers, but her findings kept coming back to me as I wrestled with the texts for this morning where Jesus essentially asked his disciples, “What do you believe about me?” Could I do any better than the kids Dean interviewed in articulating my own faith? Did the disciples? Did Peter? What would I answer, what would you answer, if Jesus posed the question to you, “Who do you say that I am?”
What Jesus is asking the disciples about this morning is about confession. Now, because the English language is not at all confusing (sarcasm), we use the word confession twice in worship and mean two completely different things. We used it in the confession and forgiveness at the beginning of the service, where we confess, we admit, our sins, and hear God’s forgiveness. And then after the sermon, when it is time for the Apostles’ Creed, I will invite you to “Join with the whole church in confessing our faith.” Confession there means to make a statement of belief. It is this second kind of confession Jesus is talking about in the reading, he’s asking the disciples what professions people are making about Jesus, and what the disciples themselves believe to be true about Jesus.
Peter answered Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus called Peter a rock, the rock on whom Jesus would build the church. A foundation so strong that even the gates of hell itself would not prevail against it. So clearly Peter got the answer right. He passed the “recognizing Jesus as God” litmus test and got all the powers and the glory that come with it.
Except, here’s the thing about Peter and this pronouncement by Jesus that Peter is the rock of the church, Peter is like the wishy-washiest rock you ever saw. He’s like that one stone in a creek that looks all stable until you reach it, and then as soon as you step on it, it shifts to the side and dumps you on your knees in the water. Spoiler alert: next week we will read the very next scene in the Gospel where Jesus is foretelling the crucifixion, and Peter totally gets it wrong, to the point where Jesus has to finally turn around and essentially tell Peter off. So make sure to tune in next week for another exciting installment of Peter: Not the Stablest Rock.
But this week Peter made a confession of faith, and Jesus praised him for that. And even with Peter’s constant failings and misunderstandings, he got to keep the nickname. I’ve been calling him Peter throughout the sermon for the sake of clarity, and the Gospel calls him Peter for the same reason, but if we flip back to Matthew 4, when Jesus called the disciples, we see that his name is really Simon. But no one really called him Simon after this moment in Matthew 16. Instead he was Peter, petros in the Greek, which literally means Rock.
So if Peter didn’t really get what he was saying, and Jesus had to know he didn’t, why did Jesus ask in the first place and why did Jesus praise Peter’s answer? I think it’s because we make confessions of faith not for Jesus, but for us. When Jesus asked the disciples who he was it wasn’t because Jesus needed the answer. Jesus knew who he was. He didn’t need his stumbly, wishy-washy disciples to tell him. But the disciples need to know who Jesus was. They had to believe, not just some sort of vague fuzzy notion, but in real, clear, concrete language that they could wrap their mouths around, even if their hearts and minds couldn’t always follow. Pastor David Lose says that “the confessions we offer aren’t words of praise to God but words of power that help root us in the love and possibility that Jesus offers.” Putting it in the framework of the article I was talking about earlier, the confession Peter offered was the story of faith that helped ground in him the sense of purpose in his life and the sense of hope that would keep him going through the pitfalls ahead. It didn’t mean he was going to get it right all the time, and it didn’t mean that bad things weren’t going to happen, but what it did mean was that when he faced challenges, the rock he could go back to was not his own foundation, but the foundation of Christ. He had language he could hold on to and a community to speak it with him when his heart and mind were weak.
So I want to leave you this morning with a challenge. To think about how you would answer the question Jesus posed, “Who do you say that I am?” Sit with it, wrestle with it, and then write down, in just a couple sentences, what you believe to be true about Jesus. This isn’t a test, I’m not asking to see your answers, I won’t collect anything next week. But my hope is that this could be something you can go back to when the world feels out of kilter. Something to help you find grounding again in the love and the grace of God.
Because it’s a hard question, I’ll go first. Bear in mind I’ve had too much school, so I apologize in advance that mine probably has too many big words in it. It would be a better confession if it was simpler, but as it feels pretty vulnerable to throw all this out to you, I hope you will be graceful about my pretentious language. So here’s what I believe:
• I believe that the incarnation-the Word made Flesh-means that God has experienced, and thus understands, everything about what it means to be human, joy yes, but also pain, fear, even doubt and loss.
• I believe that grace and niceness are not the same, that sometimes grace hurts but it is always life-giving.
• Along the same lines, I believe that carrying a cross and bearing a burden are two completely different things. Burdens are put upon us, and we are meant to bear them together. But crosses we choose. I believe that the only person besides you who can tell you what your cross is, is God, and God has given us the free will to choose our own cross. And if God isn’t going to tell us, no human gets to.
• I believe that Paul had it right in Romans, that nothing, not death or life, angels or demons, things present or things to come, not power, not height, not depth, or any other created thing, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
• I believe that in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, God promised that the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen. That there is always, always, life after death.
• And finally, I believe in the power of divine mystery. I believe that doubt is a part of faith. I believe I don’t have to “get it” all the time in order for my faith to be real.
There you go. It’s way too long and the language is more obscure than I’d like, but like I said, I’ve had too much school, please forgive me. Now I’ve told you what I believe, how about you? Who do you say that Christ is? Amen.
Sources:
John Blake, "Author: More Teens Becoming 'Fake' Christians," CNN.com (August 27, 2010), http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html (accessed August 20, 2014).
David Lose, "Pentecost 11A: Who Do You Say I Am?," ...in the Meantime, entry posted August 18, 2014, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/08/pentecost-11-a-who-do-you-say-i-am/ (accessed August 20, 2014).
Monday, August 18, 2014
Demon Cats, Baptism, and the Tenacious Love of God: A Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28
I know Louie was hoping for a squirt gun this morning, and I’m afraid I don’t have one. But what I do have is this spray bottle, which actually played a really important role in my life for a summer, when it was, quite literally, my salvation. A spray bottle just like this one kept me safe from this little monster right here. Now, don’t let his small size and general cuteness fool you, this fellow packed a punch.
I lived with this little monster the summer between my first and second years of seminary. His name was Worf and I am pretty sure he was a demon. There is really no other explanation for his crazy, maniacal behavior. Notice his flattened face, tattered ear, and lazy, goopy eye, this fellow had a violent past. The rest of the roommates he would ignore but if I entered a room he would turn his head, fixing that goopy eye on me for just a moment, before he would lurch with almost supernatural speed to attach his entire body around my leg, biting and clawing ferociously. I wore long pants through the whole, hot, muggy, DC summer, but to no avail. That cat could draw blood through jeans.
Eventually, I hit on a solution, this spray bottle. I carried it tucked in my pocket like a character from an old western. When I left the house, I placed it just inside the front door so I could reach in and grab it before opening the door all the way. Then I would preemptively squirt a stream of water at Worf, who was hissing at me from the top of the stairs, driving off his attack until I could make my way safely to my room.
By the end of the summer, Worf became at least used to me. I still carried the spray bottle but at night he began to sleep with me, stretching out his body to touch as much of me as possible, goopy eye pressed against my leg. I did not like this, but as we seemed to be getting along I certainly wasn’t going to dissuade him. Even with this uneasy truce more than once I awoke to my roommate standing over me, whispering “don’t move” as she pointed the spray bottle, which I kept on the bedside table, at the small figure crouching on the floor beside my bed ready to pounce. I was never sure what prompted these late-night attacks or his determined animosity to me in the first place, but like I said at the beginning, I’m pretty sure Worf was a demon, and demons simply don’t make sense. [pause]
OK, so I don’t really think the cat was a demon. But in our Gospel reading this morning the Canaanite woman approached Jesus because her daughter was tormented by a demon, and Worf was the best example I could come up with. I’m never really sure what to do with demons in Scripture. It’s not something we’re really comfortable talking about in modern society. But here’s what I wonder about demons, maybe we give too little credit for them if we think about them only as supernatural beings. If we’re broader in our definition, if a demon is something that holds us captive, couldn’t a lot of things be demons. Couldn’t poverty then be a demon, or violence, or our relenting need for control? Could depression be a demon, or alcoholism, or fear? Not in the sense that these things are some otherworldly beings, but in the sense that these things keep us from living up to our best potential, keep us from having the kind of fulfillment that God wants for us. And like Worf’s continual assault on me, these patterns of control are manipulative and tenacious and they do not go away. Even when we think we have them beat; they have this way of sneaking back into our lives, of wresting control again, of telling us lies like we are worthless, unloved, powerless.
And the Canaanite woman just wasn’t going to stand for anyone calling her daughter unworthy. So even though she was a woman and a Canaanite and had no business addressing a Jewish leader and teacher such as Jesus, she marched right up to him and demanded that he heal her daughter. The disciples weren’t really sure what to do with this angry, shouting woman. Even Jesus seemed unwilling to engage in her struggle. But here’s the thing, even when Jesus turned her down, she would not let go. She knew that there was enough for her daughter, that Jesus had enough grace, enough power, enough healing for her daughter. Despite the controls that society had placed around her which said that she didn’t matter, she knew the inherent value of her own soul, and she would not let Jesus walk away from his obligation to see her as truly human. So determinedly persistent was this woman that she stood toe to toe with the divine until he gave her what she wanted, freedom and healing for her daughter.
I don’t understand Jesus’ initial reluctance to help the woman, but quite frankly I don’t think it really matters to the story. After all, it isn’t like the forces that our lives always have some sort of logical cause and effect. Depression isn’t concerned with your abilities; poverty is not a measure of work ethic. Sometimes stuff happens, and it’s bad, and there just isn’t a reason for it. But here’s what I think does matter to the story, that the mother is tenacious, even more tenacious than the demons that control her daughter, even more tenacious than the disciples, or even than Jesus, and that tenacity gives her the strength to demand that her daughter too is worthy of healing. And that tenacity reminds me of God.
This morning we celebrate Lou’s baptism in Christ and we remember our own. When we celebrate this sacrament we make the radical claim that God meets us here. That we are joined to God as sons and daughters, heirs to the promise of life. You know what that means? That means that the ferocity with which the Canaanite woman sought healing for her daughter is the same ferocity with which the creator of the universe clings to us. That means that in baptism, in these waters, God says to us you are inherently of value, you are of ultimate worth, and I am willing to fight for you. God promises in these waters that the tenacity of the things that plague us, call them demons, call them addiction, call them depression, call them the economy, call them whatever you want, they have nothing on the love and the power and the strength of God. In baptism, God says to us, you are my child, you are of insurmountable worth, and there is nothing in heaven or on earth that you can do or that can be done to you that will separate you from God.
Baptism is not a magic potion. It does not mean that adversity will never strike, that we will never have to face any challenges. But what it does mean is that when we feel like we are held captive, when we feel out of control, we can cling to the promises made here. That we matter to God, that we are bound to God, and that no matter what we face, there is enough power, enough grace, enough healing for us. We can approach the creator of the universe with the same confidence as the Canaanite woman, because it is the ferocity with which the creator of the universe clings to us. When the forces of the world seek to call us less than we are. When the powers tell us that we do not matter, that our voices do not count, that we are small and insignificant, we can come back to the font, we can dip our hands into this water and know that we are children of the most high God, sons and daughters of the promise.
So remember that. Next time you reach for a water bottle to squirt the cat, when you’re washing your face in the morning, when you’re standing on the shores of Gougac Lake. Remember as you pour water from a Britta and when you walk by this font. Remember that you are loved. Remember that the God of the universe has named you God’s child. Remember that nothing can ever take that name from you. Pause, make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and remember that you are loved. Amen.
I lived with this little monster the summer between my first and second years of seminary. His name was Worf and I am pretty sure he was a demon. There is really no other explanation for his crazy, maniacal behavior. Notice his flattened face, tattered ear, and lazy, goopy eye, this fellow had a violent past. The rest of the roommates he would ignore but if I entered a room he would turn his head, fixing that goopy eye on me for just a moment, before he would lurch with almost supernatural speed to attach his entire body around my leg, biting and clawing ferociously. I wore long pants through the whole, hot, muggy, DC summer, but to no avail. That cat could draw blood through jeans.
Eventually, I hit on a solution, this spray bottle. I carried it tucked in my pocket like a character from an old western. When I left the house, I placed it just inside the front door so I could reach in and grab it before opening the door all the way. Then I would preemptively squirt a stream of water at Worf, who was hissing at me from the top of the stairs, driving off his attack until I could make my way safely to my room.
By the end of the summer, Worf became at least used to me. I still carried the spray bottle but at night he began to sleep with me, stretching out his body to touch as much of me as possible, goopy eye pressed against my leg. I did not like this, but as we seemed to be getting along I certainly wasn’t going to dissuade him. Even with this uneasy truce more than once I awoke to my roommate standing over me, whispering “don’t move” as she pointed the spray bottle, which I kept on the bedside table, at the small figure crouching on the floor beside my bed ready to pounce. I was never sure what prompted these late-night attacks or his determined animosity to me in the first place, but like I said at the beginning, I’m pretty sure Worf was a demon, and demons simply don’t make sense. [pause]
OK, so I don’t really think the cat was a demon. But in our Gospel reading this morning the Canaanite woman approached Jesus because her daughter was tormented by a demon, and Worf was the best example I could come up with. I’m never really sure what to do with demons in Scripture. It’s not something we’re really comfortable talking about in modern society. But here’s what I wonder about demons, maybe we give too little credit for them if we think about them only as supernatural beings. If we’re broader in our definition, if a demon is something that holds us captive, couldn’t a lot of things be demons. Couldn’t poverty then be a demon, or violence, or our relenting need for control? Could depression be a demon, or alcoholism, or fear? Not in the sense that these things are some otherworldly beings, but in the sense that these things keep us from living up to our best potential, keep us from having the kind of fulfillment that God wants for us. And like Worf’s continual assault on me, these patterns of control are manipulative and tenacious and they do not go away. Even when we think we have them beat; they have this way of sneaking back into our lives, of wresting control again, of telling us lies like we are worthless, unloved, powerless.
And the Canaanite woman just wasn’t going to stand for anyone calling her daughter unworthy. So even though she was a woman and a Canaanite and had no business addressing a Jewish leader and teacher such as Jesus, she marched right up to him and demanded that he heal her daughter. The disciples weren’t really sure what to do with this angry, shouting woman. Even Jesus seemed unwilling to engage in her struggle. But here’s the thing, even when Jesus turned her down, she would not let go. She knew that there was enough for her daughter, that Jesus had enough grace, enough power, enough healing for her daughter. Despite the controls that society had placed around her which said that she didn’t matter, she knew the inherent value of her own soul, and she would not let Jesus walk away from his obligation to see her as truly human. So determinedly persistent was this woman that she stood toe to toe with the divine until he gave her what she wanted, freedom and healing for her daughter.
I don’t understand Jesus’ initial reluctance to help the woman, but quite frankly I don’t think it really matters to the story. After all, it isn’t like the forces that our lives always have some sort of logical cause and effect. Depression isn’t concerned with your abilities; poverty is not a measure of work ethic. Sometimes stuff happens, and it’s bad, and there just isn’t a reason for it. But here’s what I think does matter to the story, that the mother is tenacious, even more tenacious than the demons that control her daughter, even more tenacious than the disciples, or even than Jesus, and that tenacity gives her the strength to demand that her daughter too is worthy of healing. And that tenacity reminds me of God.
This morning we celebrate Lou’s baptism in Christ and we remember our own. When we celebrate this sacrament we make the radical claim that God meets us here. That we are joined to God as sons and daughters, heirs to the promise of life. You know what that means? That means that the ferocity with which the Canaanite woman sought healing for her daughter is the same ferocity with which the creator of the universe clings to us. That means that in baptism, in these waters, God says to us you are inherently of value, you are of ultimate worth, and I am willing to fight for you. God promises in these waters that the tenacity of the things that plague us, call them demons, call them addiction, call them depression, call them the economy, call them whatever you want, they have nothing on the love and the power and the strength of God. In baptism, God says to us, you are my child, you are of insurmountable worth, and there is nothing in heaven or on earth that you can do or that can be done to you that will separate you from God.
Baptism is not a magic potion. It does not mean that adversity will never strike, that we will never have to face any challenges. But what it does mean is that when we feel like we are held captive, when we feel out of control, we can cling to the promises made here. That we matter to God, that we are bound to God, and that no matter what we face, there is enough power, enough grace, enough healing for us. We can approach the creator of the universe with the same confidence as the Canaanite woman, because it is the ferocity with which the creator of the universe clings to us. When the forces of the world seek to call us less than we are. When the powers tell us that we do not matter, that our voices do not count, that we are small and insignificant, we can come back to the font, we can dip our hands into this water and know that we are children of the most high God, sons and daughters of the promise.
So remember that. Next time you reach for a water bottle to squirt the cat, when you’re washing your face in the morning, when you’re standing on the shores of Gougac Lake. Remember as you pour water from a Britta and when you walk by this font. Remember that you are loved. Remember that the God of the universe has named you God’s child. Remember that nothing can ever take that name from you. Pause, make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and remember that you are loved. Amen.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Get Out of the Boat or God Doesn't Hate Whales: A Sermon on Matthew 14:22-33
When we last saw the disciples, they were stretched out along the Galilean hillside, tired and amazed from having just fed thousands of people with nothing but the few bread and fish that Jesus had blessed. This morning we see that Jesus did not leave them in their wondering for too long. Because immediately, the text tells us, immediately Jesus told them to get up, get in the boat, and head out for the other side, so Jesus could finally have the alone time that it seemed he’d been hoping for since he first came to the wilderness.
So the disciples headed out, the crowds disbursed, and Jesus went off by himself to pray. For how long, we don’t know, but what we do know is when evening came, Jesus was still in prayer and the disciples were caught in the middle of the water, nowhere near the other shore. Now as we look at this story, here are some things that are helpful to know. First, the word “sea” notwithstanding, the Sea of Galilee is not a particularly big lake. We’re not talking Lake Michigan here; you can certainly stand on one shore and see the other side. But it is a uniquely ferocious body of water. Because Galilee is located right on the edge of the Judean desert, it is prone to tremendous windstorms that can swoop out of nowhere and in an instant turn the calm lake to roil.
The other thing to know about this story is that throughout scripture the sea is frequently used as a metaphor for a place of chaos and fear. Monsters like the Leviathan were believed to live in the sea; the Psalmist often talks about the raging sea. When the book of Revelation says that in the New Jerusalem the sea will be no more, it’s not because God has a thing against whales. It’s because the sea stood for chaos, for terror, for that destructive force which could not be controlled, and God promises that the New Jerusalem will be free from all such power and fear.
So even though the disciples were fishermen, and they spent their lives on the water, they did so with a healthy respect for the power they were dealing with. This was before the days of OCEA requirements and GPS navigation and weather maps. The disciples knew every time they got into their boat that they were just a few men in a dingy against the wrath of creation.
When they left Jesus it had been a clear day, but while Jesus was praying a storm had blown in and the disciples were struggling against the wind, their tiny boat battered by the waves. And then in our story the next sentence is morning but think about the time that passed for the disciples. All through the long night, they struggled against the wind and the waves, trying to reach the far shore. And remember, this is the first century and they’re in a boat. So there are no navigation systems to tell them which way to go, no electricity to illuminate their directions, no sonar to guide them in, no reflected glare from cities on the shoreline, not even so much as a candle to let them see the riggings. They are in the dark, alone, struggling against the thing which the scriptures describe as chaos itself.
And then, early in the morning, out in the distance, the disciples see a figure walking toward them on the sea. The Greek here is “fourth watch” so somewhere between three and six am. Depending on where in the time it fell, it is either completely dark and the figure is highlighted just by moonlight, or by the cloudy grayness of the false dawn. Either way, it is hard to make out details of this strange form approaching them on the waves. The disciples, rightly so, are terrified. They’ve been up all night fighting for their lives, and now a ghostly apparition is walking toward them across the water. Fear is, I think, the logical response in such a situation.
And then Jesus speaks to them from across the water, saying “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” What our English translated to “it is I,” is better heard as “I am.” “Take heart, I am, do not be afraid.” The sentence doesn’t make much sense grammatically, but it rings with power biblically. I Am is the divine name of God, I Am echoes across space and time, I Am came to Moses in a burning bush, I Am led the exiles back from Babylon, I Am spoke over the waters at creation. When Jesus tells the disciples “Take heart, I Am,” this is not an identifier; this is a pronouncement that the very power of God, the one who formed the sea itself, is with them.
Peter answered back, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Now Peter has taken a lot of flak from theologians over the years, wondering why Peter questioned Jesus, why Peter needed proof. But the more I read and wrestled with this story this week, the more I wondered if that wasn’t really what was going on here. Remember, the sea is terrifying; it is the embodiment of chaos itself. And the storm is still raging at this point, the sea still roiling. And Peter asks to leave the boat, the only safety that he’s ever known, to walk out on the sea. What Peter is asking for here is the opportunity to take a risk in his faith in order to be more like Jesus. Discipleship is about following the teacher so closely that your actions mimic theirs. It is a style of learning that involves trying to mold your own life after the life of the one who is leading you. And that’s really what Peter is doing here, he’s saying, Lord, let me walk so closely in your footsteps that I can do this impossible thing. And so I wonder if Jesus’ response to Peter here is not the exasperation the theologians tend to read into it, but instead a delighted “yes.” Yes, Peter, I thought you’d never ask, yes, step out of that boat and into the fear, yes, take a risk in your faith and do the thing you thought was impossible in your attempts to be more like me.
So Peter stepped out of the boat and into the raging storm and began to walk toward Jesus. But as he walked, the reality of what was doing overcame him, and he began to sink. And he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And what does Jesus do then? Well, I’ll tell you what Jesus did not do. He did not cross his arms and say, “Peter, you got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out. You’re the one who wanted to walk on water, after all.” No, right. That’s not what happened. What happened was Jesus immediately, immediately, the text said, reached out his hand and caught Peter. And then Jesus said to Peter, “you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Like the doubt was caused by Peter’s little faith, and if he’d only had more faith, he could have stayed on the water. And we tend to hear this as a criticism of Peter, right, that he didn’t have enough faith. But remember, Jesus said that if you have just a little faith, just a mustard seed of faith, you could move mountains. So what if Jesus is saying to Peter, you have a little faith. You have a little faith, and it is enough to get you through, so you don’t need to doubt, because what you have, who you are, is enough. And then they got back in the boat, and it was then, and only then, that the wind ceased. “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”
Like Peter, there are times in our lives when we find ourselves faced with opportunities to step out of our comfort zones and into the raging sea. To get involved in that project, or try that new form of prayer, or question that belief we’d always held, or talk to our friend, our neighbor, our colleague, about our faith, or so many other things. And it’s scary. It’s scary to take that risk, to make that step, to open ourselves up to failure. Easier, right, safer, to leave the questioning, the challenging, to Jesus and to stay with what we know. But what this text promises us is that when we step out of our boats, Jesus is there beside us, encouraging us on. And we won’t always succeed. Taking risks in faith don’t always play out right. We’ll fail at times, we’ll get scared, we’ll start to sink. But in our failures, Jesus is there to catch us and help us back into the boat. Because discipleship is not about our success, it is about trying, about taking the next step, following the footsteps of the master into the impossible. And most of all, discipleship is about Jesus, the great teacher who though we may sink, promises never to let us drown. And so whether we succeed or fail, Jesus is there to catch us. Amen.
So the disciples headed out, the crowds disbursed, and Jesus went off by himself to pray. For how long, we don’t know, but what we do know is when evening came, Jesus was still in prayer and the disciples were caught in the middle of the water, nowhere near the other shore. Now as we look at this story, here are some things that are helpful to know. First, the word “sea” notwithstanding, the Sea of Galilee is not a particularly big lake. We’re not talking Lake Michigan here; you can certainly stand on one shore and see the other side. But it is a uniquely ferocious body of water. Because Galilee is located right on the edge of the Judean desert, it is prone to tremendous windstorms that can swoop out of nowhere and in an instant turn the calm lake to roil.
The other thing to know about this story is that throughout scripture the sea is frequently used as a metaphor for a place of chaos and fear. Monsters like the Leviathan were believed to live in the sea; the Psalmist often talks about the raging sea. When the book of Revelation says that in the New Jerusalem the sea will be no more, it’s not because God has a thing against whales. It’s because the sea stood for chaos, for terror, for that destructive force which could not be controlled, and God promises that the New Jerusalem will be free from all such power and fear.
So even though the disciples were fishermen, and they spent their lives on the water, they did so with a healthy respect for the power they were dealing with. This was before the days of OCEA requirements and GPS navigation and weather maps. The disciples knew every time they got into their boat that they were just a few men in a dingy against the wrath of creation.
When they left Jesus it had been a clear day, but while Jesus was praying a storm had blown in and the disciples were struggling against the wind, their tiny boat battered by the waves. And then in our story the next sentence is morning but think about the time that passed for the disciples. All through the long night, they struggled against the wind and the waves, trying to reach the far shore. And remember, this is the first century and they’re in a boat. So there are no navigation systems to tell them which way to go, no electricity to illuminate their directions, no sonar to guide them in, no reflected glare from cities on the shoreline, not even so much as a candle to let them see the riggings. They are in the dark, alone, struggling against the thing which the scriptures describe as chaos itself.
And then, early in the morning, out in the distance, the disciples see a figure walking toward them on the sea. The Greek here is “fourth watch” so somewhere between three and six am. Depending on where in the time it fell, it is either completely dark and the figure is highlighted just by moonlight, or by the cloudy grayness of the false dawn. Either way, it is hard to make out details of this strange form approaching them on the waves. The disciples, rightly so, are terrified. They’ve been up all night fighting for their lives, and now a ghostly apparition is walking toward them across the water. Fear is, I think, the logical response in such a situation.
And then Jesus speaks to them from across the water, saying “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” What our English translated to “it is I,” is better heard as “I am.” “Take heart, I am, do not be afraid.” The sentence doesn’t make much sense grammatically, but it rings with power biblically. I Am is the divine name of God, I Am echoes across space and time, I Am came to Moses in a burning bush, I Am led the exiles back from Babylon, I Am spoke over the waters at creation. When Jesus tells the disciples “Take heart, I Am,” this is not an identifier; this is a pronouncement that the very power of God, the one who formed the sea itself, is with them.
Peter answered back, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Now Peter has taken a lot of flak from theologians over the years, wondering why Peter questioned Jesus, why Peter needed proof. But the more I read and wrestled with this story this week, the more I wondered if that wasn’t really what was going on here. Remember, the sea is terrifying; it is the embodiment of chaos itself. And the storm is still raging at this point, the sea still roiling. And Peter asks to leave the boat, the only safety that he’s ever known, to walk out on the sea. What Peter is asking for here is the opportunity to take a risk in his faith in order to be more like Jesus. Discipleship is about following the teacher so closely that your actions mimic theirs. It is a style of learning that involves trying to mold your own life after the life of the one who is leading you. And that’s really what Peter is doing here, he’s saying, Lord, let me walk so closely in your footsteps that I can do this impossible thing. And so I wonder if Jesus’ response to Peter here is not the exasperation the theologians tend to read into it, but instead a delighted “yes.” Yes, Peter, I thought you’d never ask, yes, step out of that boat and into the fear, yes, take a risk in your faith and do the thing you thought was impossible in your attempts to be more like me.
So Peter stepped out of the boat and into the raging storm and began to walk toward Jesus. But as he walked, the reality of what was doing overcame him, and he began to sink. And he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And what does Jesus do then? Well, I’ll tell you what Jesus did not do. He did not cross his arms and say, “Peter, you got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out. You’re the one who wanted to walk on water, after all.” No, right. That’s not what happened. What happened was Jesus immediately, immediately, the text said, reached out his hand and caught Peter. And then Jesus said to Peter, “you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Like the doubt was caused by Peter’s little faith, and if he’d only had more faith, he could have stayed on the water. And we tend to hear this as a criticism of Peter, right, that he didn’t have enough faith. But remember, Jesus said that if you have just a little faith, just a mustard seed of faith, you could move mountains. So what if Jesus is saying to Peter, you have a little faith. You have a little faith, and it is enough to get you through, so you don’t need to doubt, because what you have, who you are, is enough. And then they got back in the boat, and it was then, and only then, that the wind ceased. “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”
Like Peter, there are times in our lives when we find ourselves faced with opportunities to step out of our comfort zones and into the raging sea. To get involved in that project, or try that new form of prayer, or question that belief we’d always held, or talk to our friend, our neighbor, our colleague, about our faith, or so many other things. And it’s scary. It’s scary to take that risk, to make that step, to open ourselves up to failure. Easier, right, safer, to leave the questioning, the challenging, to Jesus and to stay with what we know. But what this text promises us is that when we step out of our boats, Jesus is there beside us, encouraging us on. And we won’t always succeed. Taking risks in faith don’t always play out right. We’ll fail at times, we’ll get scared, we’ll start to sink. But in our failures, Jesus is there to catch us and help us back into the boat. Because discipleship is not about our success, it is about trying, about taking the next step, following the footsteps of the master into the impossible. And most of all, discipleship is about Jesus, the great teacher who though we may sink, promises never to let us drown. And so whether we succeed or fail, Jesus is there to catch us. Amen.
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